Hackers 1, Protesters 0

(Supposed) hacker who is part of Anonymous talks about what can and can’t be accomplished in both physical and network realms.

Who’s beating me at this whole art thing:

Shen Qi, who in 1989 cut off his finger in protest of the events of Tienanmen Square. He then created a series of photographs of his hand in which he holds different photographs. He was recently featured in this month’s National Geographic.

Aliza Shvarts, the Yale Graduate Student who wins the publicity prize for artificially inseminating herself and then taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriage. (Or not; Yale and the Police are calling it a hoax. Even if the art is her fabricated story, it’s quite a legitimate statement.) If she hadn’t done it, a guy would have, and props to her for getting this much personal notice.

This You Tube video response is hilarious.
There are many more You Tube critiques: way to get the public involved, Aliza.

I’m not saying that art isn’t legitimate unless you brutalize your body, and I don’t think I would dare set these pieces on equal pedestals. The truth of the matter is that perhaps the guy on You Tube is right: maybe Aliza isn’t much of an artist and she banked on shock value to get herself noticed.

It goes without saying that good art doesn’t have to be shocking.  However, in the case of Sheng Qi, the final, striking image of a human hand with an amputated finger set centrally against a plain red background evokes a visceral reaction and serves a poignant narrative. It’s a very simple concept, but evokes very powerful, difficult emotions, and he could not have forced the viewer to contemplate the same issues without “shock value.”

The Oulipo

The Ouvroir de littérature potentielle was formed in 1960 France by Francois LeLionnais and Raymond Queneau.

The goal of the group was to create “potential literature,” or in other words, analyze and create a set of standards formed from constraints placed on literature. These constraints drew from both marginalized writing techniques and contemporary mathematics. (This sensibility resonates with the contemporary film The Five Obstructions.)

“One such technique is the lipogram, in which a certain letter of the alphabet may not be used; another is the palindrome.”

Because the group was involved heavily with not only literary minds but also mathematicians, many new methods for approaching literary structure were developed. The works of literature produced under these constraints have been associated with new media and database art. For example, Italo Calvino’s incomplete Order in Crime attempted to write a story based on anti-combinator processes a computer could theoretically be programmed to execute. This forward thinking is also reflected in Borges’ The Garden of Forking Paths, which preconceived hypertext. (Calvino was a member of The Oulipo, Borges was not.)

Landscapes and Database Aesthetic

Here we have a map of Mt. Diablo, California.  This map could be described as a visualization of a database: every point on the graph represents a specific topographical, geological, and environmental piece of data.  This specific map displays topographical data.  Arguably, because maps are always visualizations of a data set, they offer a very familiar, tangible way to explore the concept of a “database aesthetic.”

I have been very interested in this idea since we looked at Victoria Vesna and discussed her new book, Database Aesthetics.  Because I don’t have a copy of the book (yet), I decided to look up other sources that might explore the idea a little.  What I found was this article, Database Logic(s) and Landscape Art by Brett Stalbaum.  (Stalbaum is one of the artists of C5, a group that focuses on tactical media, data visualization, networking, and information commodity)

The article itself is rather dense.  It certainly doesn’t propose that studying maps can illuminate any particular, universal quality of database aesthetic: in fact, if one is to explore landscape as visualized database fully, it might become impossible to pin down a universal database aesthetic quality.  The landscapes do not have to be viewed from directly above, as in a map– they can exist perspectively along 3 axis.  They could be explored according to any ramification of data:  annual rainfall, erosion over a period of time, electrical infrastructure.  If the above map is a prime example of landscape aesthetic, then so is this:

Even if one collected every possible visualization of a landscape, I am unsure as to whether or not that collection of images (which is itself a database) could illuminate any specific aesthetic.  Perhaps the database aesthetic cannot be arrived at from the final visual representation, but instead pertains more to the aesthetics of the formula that leads to a visualization.

The Restaurant Game

http://theRestaurantGame.net

I recently read an article about this in the latest Seed magazine.  I thought it was really exciting.  The game takes about 10 minutes to play– I haven’t done it yet.  I can’t do it now because I’m in the LSU library.  Since it is a New Media project that we can participate in RIGHT NOW I think we have some kind of duty to play with MIT.

I’m going to play tonight.  EVERYONE, Come play with me!

There’s a video of it below:

Tactical Media, Etoy, legal precedent

“Tactical media can be defined as the appropriation of mass media in order to oppose and criticize a target which often occupies a certain position of power. This modern form of activism can be recognized by its use of current technology and its ‘hit-and-run tactics’ media campaigns which are often short-lived in nature. The purpose of tactical media lays within the type of information it distributes and the warnings it can sometimes produce. By generating this information and creating this reaction, tactical media attempts to reverse the one-way-flow of communication and power and give some of the control back to the public.”

THE TOYWAR STORY

Mostly for my own sake, I am going to summarize my favorite points of interest in the Toywar case. There was little legal precedent for Toywar. It was an international issue: the corporation eToys is American, the art group Etoy is Swiss. In traditional corporate form, eToys actually tried to buy the domain rights from Etoy prior to filing suit. The fact that eToys actually filed suit — I find — reflects poorly on the American Judicial System. The case makes apparent that there is little protection or value for artists under the law in America.

Even though Etoy won the case, I simply don’t see why it had to be an issue. Court proceedings are costly and time consuming– although, this time I suppose that it backfired on the corporation. The lucky thing about Etoy is that even if they had lost their case, they still would have maintained an important artistic stance of questioning the established power structure.

I hope that the precedent of Toywar remains important in American court systems and isn’t laughed off as a waste of time caused by some crazy artsy Europeans. It marks a victory for artistic freedom and license to use the internet for non- or anti-corporate agendas.

I wish I could have written that last line and left it alone.  No, it must be suggested that the entire legal battle of Toywar provided the Etoy artists with new fodder to produce a variety of new artworks with: for example, that image of VICTORY!!! I posted is… well… trademarked.  I suppose what Etoy does with the work will be the true measure of their artistic integrity.

That aside, Toywar still remains an important legal precedent.

A Hacker Manifesto

A Hacker Manifesto by McKenzie Wark

I am struck by the section on education, not because I am surprised, but because of the poignancy of the writing:

27. Education is slavery, it enchains the mind and makes it a resource for class power. When the ruling class preaches the necessity of an education it invariably means an education in necessity. Education is not the same as knowledge. Nor is it the necessary means to acquire knowledge. Education is the organization of knowledge within the constraints of scarcity. Education ‘disciplines’ knowledge, segregating it into homogenous ‘fields’, presided over by suitably ‘qualified’ guardians charged with policing the representation of the field. One may acquire an education, as if it were a thing, but one becomes knowledgeable, through a process of transformation. Knowledge, as such, is only ever partially captured by education, its practice always eludes and exceeds it.

and

29. The so-called middle class achieve their privileged access to consumption and security through education, in which they are obliged to invest a substantial part of their income. But most remain workers, even though they work with information rather than cotton or metal. They work in factories, but are trained to think of them as offices. They take home wages, but are trained to think of it as a salary. They wear a uniform, but are trained to think of it as a suit. The only difference is that education has taught them to give different names to the instruments of exploitation, and to despise those their own class who name them differently.

This section successfully displaces the romantic ideas I had about higher education when I was a child (it makes me feel like the education system– especially in America– is very good at brainwashing) and it replaces it with a new “hacker” romanticism.
The Representation section piqued my personal interest, as a painting undergraduate who largely produces representational work. For example, it opens up with the statement that: “All representation is false.” I entirely agree with this, but can’t help but feel the dissident tones it expresses. I think there is a certain optimism in the falseness of representation. I don’t think that the falseness and its relationship to the politics of the “state” is a bad thing, or that it makes any form of representation an ineffectual piece of art.

When Wark states, “Everywhere dissatisfaction with representations is spreading,” I hope that means that the representations are causing dissatisfaction with politics of the state.

Overall, I must admit… the tone of this manifesto makes me think about how easily the glorious Anonymous (vs. Scientology) could be parodied.

Analog –> Digital –> Analog

Here’s a great example of digital technology being reintegrated culturally into the analog world. This clock has the appearance of being digital, but is actually entirely worked through analog mechanisms. It is similar to Lev Manovich’s wallet with a web browser sewn onto it, but perhaps only superficially. For example, in the article we read, it was implied that perhaps in the future, the web buttons on the wallet would actually connect to the internet. In this clock, the appearance of digitization is simply an excuse to use already existing analog technology in a creative way.

For another example of techno-culture sneaking into the physical world, check out the katamari sculptures in my previous blog entry.

robots and monsters

If you’re reading this I guess you’re the 99.9% of the world that wasn’t at the Satellite Gallery opening last night. I mean, tonight. You’re also part of the large majority of LSU who could have gone to it, because it’s right under your nose (in the first floor of the stairwell in the art building). If you go there now, you’ll see a small bulletin board– half of it with some drawings of girl and boy robots (exploring the pre-programmed nature of gender issues in our culture, curtosy of Emily Randall) and the other half of it full of monsters contemplating mercury poisoning in fish. Curtosy of me.

It’s not really just about mercury poisoning in fish, by the way, it’s about the primal organic element in all of us, as organisms (or alternatively, it’s about the primal organic element of all of us, as cyborgs).

The show was pretty elementary on an obvious level. We presented our little doodles. We hung a piece of paper on the wall and let people draw their own monsters and robots on it. Someone drew a President Putin-Bot. We had beer and cigarettes. We even had a permit for the beer, unbeknown to most of the partiers. What developed at the event was pretty exciting.

There were a lot of conversations stimulated by the concept– what is a robot? Would you rather be a robot or a monster? Can you believe that we’ve sustained a conversation about this for 30 minutes? Can you believe that those goofy drawings stimulated conversations about whether we are more robot or monster? Can you, gentle reader, believe that I actually had a show where a couple of random visitors decided that the art of the piece wasn’t the drawings or the preformance of drawing, but the entire interaction?  Relational art came up as a topic of discourse.

Keep your eyes open for more Satellite Gallery events.

Radio as a Marginalized Media

After discussing various marginalized groups in class yesterday– basically everything that isn’t a heterosexual white male (Not that I dislike heterosexual white males.  I have a lot of love for the heterosexual white males on an individual basis &etc &etc.) — I got this idea that different forms of media are marginalized… especially “dead tech,” or at least “less new tech” such as radio.

Who cares about the radio?  We have the internet now, which is extremely interactive and multi-sensory.  You can tailor the interface to your needs, and the subject matter that you expose yourself to changes with your whim.  And at the very least, there is television.  While it’s not interactive, it is much more attention-grabbing (invasive).  The television connects you to international broadcasts, provides an incredible variety of shows, captures us in some kind of narcissistic species-centric image system where we can see homo sapiens doing all sorts of things.

But the radio.  It’s outdated, I guess.  It predates TV.  The broadcasters are faceless and we have to rely on these faceless announcers for any kind of imagery that the radio presents to us, and to boot, the imagery that they might present us with isn’t immediate like on TV or the Internet.  We can’t rely on our sight, we have to rely on our ears, we have to process, and we have to take an active part in listening to something that we are not immediately directing (like the internet.  We can’t play wiki games on NPR.)

But there’s just something delightful about the engaged passivity of the radio.  Perhaps it’s even more personal than the internet because it forces a certain withdrawal into self and a reliance on imagination as opposed to external database (I reckon one could make the argument that imagination is a self-database).  And because its not as widely abused as TV, big corporations don’t quite log it down with as many advertisements, and they don’t control the programming quite as much.  Even nationally broadcasted programs (NPR <3<3<3<3<3) maintain a certain amount of deviance.

Maybe I will explore this idea later.